On a cool, rainy day in May of 2016, I received an email with a huge image attachment. On a desktop were spread dozens of photos from 1945. I was shocked. I recognized the photos. My father, Clifton Lennard Howard Hall, was a charming, charismatic man. He died too young, in 1987, after a 7-year battle with lung cancer. He had all the same photos. My two brothers and I had grown up looking at matching images. Most surprising was a large studio photo in the centre that I had never seen, of my father in his army uniform. 

I knew my father had been posted in the Netherlands during WWII. He had enlisted in 1941 at the age of 19. In 1945, near the end of the war, his division entered the impoverished and heavily damaged Twente Region on the border of Germany.

Although my father must have told us stories about the photos and his time in the Netherlands, it was long ago. Now that I wanted to know more details, there was no one left to ask.

So why was I seeing these images 70 years later and who had sent them? 

My mysterious correspondent was one John Hammink, from the Netherlands. His parents, Jan and Riek Hammink, had married in 1940 and settled in Almelo. When Canadian soldiers came to the area as part of the Liberation of Holland in 1945, my father was one of two Canadian soldiers who billeted with the Hamminks.   

John Hammink was born after the war.  In his childhood he remembered his parents talking about the Canadian soldiers in Almelo, but it wasn’t until many decades later, when John was cleaning out his parents’ attic after his mother’s death, that he found a box of black and white photographs dating from the war years. In one photo his mother was dressed in Canadian Army uniform, smiling with cigarette in hand.

On the back of the large studio photo was the name, Clifton Lennard Howard Hall. Having recently retired, John Hammink decided it was time to find this soldier. 

After various attempts to find the needle in the haystack of Canadians named Hall, he noticed my website and decided to contact me. Once we had ascertained I was the right Hall, he invited me to attend the May 4-5 Liberation Ceremonies held in Almelo, NL, and to visit the places my father had been during the war.  

I needed to think about this. For over three decades I have been a practicing member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). One of the things that attracted me to Quakerism was their unwavering Peace Testimony. Having seen the devastation of war I wanted no part in condoning it. But what about the Canadian Army’s contribution and my own father’s involvement in the liberation of a people who had been oppressed and starved by an occupying army? As a peacenik in the 1960s, I had given my father a hard time for his wartime involvement. Looking back, I realize he had never glorified or celebrated war. Indeed, there was much sadness about losing comrades. It was time to examine my position.

I liked the idea of travelling to Holland, but the business of life, and then the pandemic, prevented it. As restrictions eased, John’s invitation came again, and I felt I must go, if only to resolve the long-ago struggle with my father. In May of this year my husband Jeffrey and I departed for the Netherlands and for the next three days John was the most gracious and generous of hosts. My life and work have taken me many places in the world, but this trip to Almelo was exceptional for its deep emotional impact. 

Over three days we attended a very moving ceremony at the Canadian War Cemetery in Holten, laid a wreath at the Liberation Day Ceremony in Almelo, and found ourselves singing O Canada and the Dutch national anthem with Almelo’s Mayor before laying a wreath at the Canadian War Monument there. This was topped off with a bicycle ride (of course) with John and local historian Hans Krol to “see all the places your father left his footsteps 79 years ago.” 

So, eight years after that mysterious email, I was standing in the footsteps of my father in Almelo, celebrating Liberation Day with newfound Dutch friends. The two-minute silence which is observed throughout the Netherlands on May 5th was astonishing. There were over two hundred people at the ceremony in the park and I only heard the birds singing. 

I began to realize how much this was a celebration of collective cultural memory. What I experienced in Almelo was a sense of shared history and a deep, abiding love of freedom. It seems we take our freedom for granted here in Canada. Thanks to John Hammink’s persistence and dedication, I made a trip that I could never have imagined and came away with a much deeper appreciation and understanding of my father’s service in World War II. I cannot say that it resolved my feelings about war, but I have made peace with my father.